Probe Ruby Cocaine Bust  

The Minority Leader (middle) and his deputy (right) addressing the press conference yesterday

Minority New Patriotic Party (NPP) in Parliament has called for an immediate constitution of a bi-partisan parliamentary committee to investigate the cocaine saga involving 32-year-old Ghanaian lady, Ruby Nayele Ametefeh.

Ruby was nabbed by the security detail at the Heathrow Airport in London, the United Kingdom, for allegedly possessing 12.5kg of cocaine.

According to the political grouping, the scandal was causing a lot of embarrassment to the nation.

The Minority at a press conference yesterday, said the positions of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), the Minister of Communications and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration on the Nayele Ametefeh case, which the MPs said are seriously contradicting one another, must cause parliament to independently investigate the matter for proper and decisive action to be taken on it.

The Minority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu who addressed the press conference, indicated that the Minister of Communications, Dr Edward Omane-Boamah; Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hannah Tetteh and NACOB are all giving conflicting reports on the issue; 'so who should the nation believe?'

He added that in order to unravel the true facts behind the cocaine haul, parliament should be given the free hand to investigate the matter and make the appropriate recommendations.

“NACOB, a government agency, comes to tell the nation that it collaborated with British security operatives to arrest Nayele Ametefeh; and then the Minister of Communications disputes that claim while the Foreign Minister also comes to tell the nation that officials of her ministry had interviewed Nayele Ametefeh in a London cell during which she made some startling revelations but fell short of mentioning the names of her accomplices,” the minority leader observed, pointing out that all the scenarios clearly tell one thing that the real truth is being hidden from Ghanaians by people in the executive.

“The foreign minister had averred that some airport officials carried the substance believed to be gold to Nayele and so who are the so-called airport officials who carried the substance to her in her first class cabin?” the Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu queried and further asked how the foreign minister got to know that the two ladies who were accompanying Ruby also had 5kg of cocaine on them while in the case of Ruby, they thought it was gold.

According to the minority, CCTV recordings at the VVIP lounge where the cocaine ladies passed, if not altered, should be well scrutinised and all the people involved would be easily detected.

The minority called for a complete overhaul of security at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) because it had become so porous that during the six-year reign of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) six     high-profile drug barons have been arrested abroad after using the KIA.

He mentioned the arrest of Solomon Adelaquaye, managing director of Sohin Security Services Limited – which was manning security at the KIA – in the USA; the arrest of Fatima Abdulai of the Procurement Unit of NACOB who mentioned some NACOB officials and personnel of other security agencies as her accomplices; the arrest of seven suspected drug barons in the US by the FBI in April, 2012 for allegedly possessing 3.7 kilograms of heroin; the seizure of £4.3 million worth of cannabis from Ghana at the Heathrow Airport as well as 200kg of cocaine with street value of  $12 million brought into the country from Bolivia by two Nigerians with the help of their Ghanaian accomplices.

“Government should immediately re-engage the United Kingdom and USA security agencies to reconstruct the collaboration in the fight against narcotics,” Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu stressed, adding that any government official who is caught tampering with the equipment or collaborating with drug barons or couriers should be decisively dealt with

According to the minority leader, former President Atta Mills made a pledge in his 2011 'State of the Nation' Address to fight the drug menace in the country but nothing seems to have been done by this government in that direction.

The minority said if the government had any intention to fight the drug menace in the country it must quickly submit to parliament a draft bill to change NACOB into a commission which was prepared by the NPP government in 2008, for passage to make it (NACOB) more independent to be able to effectively deal with the drug menace in the country.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Minority Leader, Dominic Nitiwul, has filed an urgent motion in parliament to enable parliamentarians a better opportunity to deal with Nayele Ametefeh's cocaine matter and any other matters that might arise from it.

By Thomas Fosu Jnr